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It certainly seems sad to me that my last view of the world would start as a painful one, my eyes, as mortal as the rest of me, reacting harshly to the emerging morning light. The pain is, I guess, as good as any other sign that I am not yet a dead man; more convincing, certainly, than the vision I had before me, which appeared as if it was a dream, both brimming with detail and yet full of incomplete shapes and faces; I was on borrowed time after all, and it was as if I am seeing only the parts of the picture I had the time, or the necessity to see. I hurriedly admire what I think I should admire, and think things that I vaguely think of as profound; the edge of the sun, as divine as it has always seemed, rising above the horizon, breathing red flames into the white sky, and the early shadows that it casts on the trees and on the ground below. Oh, all these things of nature, how good do you seem today! But this is all vanity and lies, for I do not harbour such profound thoughts. Now this is the true story: these beautiful thinks I took in, processed, admired, and reflected on in an instant, but it was this man's face that held my dying gaze for the moment afterwards, and, I extrapolate, for the rest of my time on this plane. It is the face of one of my executioners. He is standing opposite me, looking only into my eyes, and, with a quick count in my periphery I notice that he is one of four, those other three with blank faces I care not to fill with a glance. But this man's face, I can certainly tell you, whoever this senseless stream of half-words is falling upon, about all the perfect details and the enviable beauties, but have I told you I am a dying man short on time? So I shall only tell you that it is the most perfect and immaculate face one could possibly imagine, although I had no time to do so, and that this man was to kill me, him and the three others, did not seem to be as profound as his simple presence, and that my death is graced upon him being here. His mouth, and what an odd place to start, looks as if it has said nothing at all, his expression betrays no secrets or desires, no emotions or fears, only that he is calm and he has always been. And his eyes - his eyes! I do not look at the colour of them, and neither shall I in my next glance, for whatever shade they may be, none has ever exceeded it in rarity, and I fear that even if I knew of it I would not find a word by which to express it. His gaze falls sharply on mine, with clear intent. He is going to kill me, and he is okay with that. No doubt an insane man would be able to mock the same expression, but this man is not insane.